Lawyers for Kevin Cooper present case to human rights commission

WASHINGTON D.C. >> Lawyers for convicted killer Kevin Cooper were granted a hearing before a human rights commission this week in another effort to clear their client in the 1983 massacre in Chino Hills.

Cooper, who was convicted in 1985 and sentenced to death, has been fighting his conviction for 28 years, claiming he is innocent in the deaths of three members of the Ryen family and a young neighbor.

Advocates for Cooper say he is entitled to a new trial because his human rights were violated during the previous litigation process.

“Executing someone whose human rights have been violated is another human rights violation,” said Norman C. Hile, whose law firm Orrick, Herrington and Sutclifse LLP took on the case in 2003.

On Monday, lawyers with Orrick, Herrington and Sutclifse presented their case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, whose mission is to promote and protect human rights in the American hemisphere, according to their web site.

“We took them through different human rights violations that we think evidence in this case shows,” Hile said about the hearing. “We also submitted declarations from people like profilers who said it had to be a group of people who committed the crimes, that Josh Ryen’s testimony was different at trial then right after the events and a declaration that the prosecution and sheriff did not try to find out who the real killers were.”

Hile also said prosecutors presented false evidence, destroyed evidence before the jury could consider it, and withheld exonerating evidence from the defense.

Cooper, who is housed at San Quentin, was not allowed to attend the hearing, but his lawyers presented an audio statement from the inmate.

On June 5, 1983, the bodies of Franklin Douglas Ryen and his wife, Peggy, both 41, along with their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, were found inside their Chino Hills home. They had been hacked and stabbed to death.

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Christopher Hughes, an 11-year-old neighbor who was sleeping over, was found dead and covered in blood near the Ryens’ bedroom door.

Joshua Ryen, 8, who survived the attack, was found inside the house drenched in blood and clinging to life. Joshua, the Ryens’ youngest child, was slashed in the throat, had a hatchet blow to the head and stab wounds to his back.

Not long after the victims were discovered, officials turned their attention to Kevin Cooper, an inmate who had escaped from the nearby California Institution for Men in Chino. A manhunt ensued and Cooper was found two months later on a boat off Santa Barbara.

The commission does not have the ability to order a new trial or decide if Cooper is guilty or innocent, Hile said. But a ruling by them might help in their efforts to get their client a new trial.

Representatives from the U.S. Department of State, who also attended the hearing, said they will file a response in about 30 days. Then the commission will make their ruling.

If it goes their way, Hile said they intend to bring the ruling to Gov. Jerry Brown.

“I think a ruling that Kevin’s human rights were violated would help with our mission to show that Kevin should receive clemency,” Hile said.